Chapter 61: Building the Wall
The battle had ended for now, but the people's work was far from over.
At this moment, the outskirts of were a scene of devastation.
Charred corpses were piled into mountains, black craters jagged across the ground, and broken electrical fences and collapsed walls all silently told of the ferocity of the battle that had taken place not long ago.
"Squad One, everyone follow me. Bodies go to Incineration Pit No. 3. Move it!"
's voice was hoarse, yet still steady and forceful.
"Roger!"
led the members of , swiftly dragging away one mangled corpse after another and dumping them into the hastily dug pit.
Three modified flatbed carts shuttled back and forth, each trip loaded to the brim.
drove the forklift, its steel forks plunging into the piles of the dead as he mechanically repeated the loading and unloading motions.
He no longer wanted to count how many there were.
"Tch! This smell..." he muttered, flooring the accelerator.
Towering columns of black smoke rolled into the sky, carrying a nauseating stench, granting these bodies their final rest.
On the other side, was leading Squad Two's people, like a band of diligent scavengers, recovering drone wreckage amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
"Be careful! That 's energy core doesn't seem to have blown. It should be salvageable!"
"This 's wing is broken. Mark it down. We'll try the repair tools on it later too!"
With great care, they carried those "treasures" that could still be saved back to the base. No one understood better than they did just how useful these cold steel creations were.
In addition, they were also responsible for recovering the drones that had turned back during the pursuit of the " " because their endurance had run low. Fortunately, as long as they made no noise, zombies took no interest in drones.
Otherwise, the cost of that pursuit would have truly been too great.
[Calculating damage rate...] 's voice sounded from the . [Remaining drones: 3,783. Total drones destroyed: 4,219. Approximately 30% are repairable.]
winced in heartache. "Heavy losses indeed!"
At the edge of the battlefield, the led by , working alongside several Robots, was silently clearing away the scattered zombies drawn by the sounds of gunfire.
Their movements were crisp and clean. Every bullet drilled precisely into a 's skull, wiping them out with remarkable efficiency.
After dealing with the wandering zombies, led his team in re-erecting the sonic repulsion devices at their designated positions, re-establishing the sonic repulsion defense line to ensure that the work behind them could proceed safely.
Everyone operated like gears wound tight, turning in perfect coordination with high efficiency.
This sudden attack-and-defense battle had put them all on edge.
Almost no one complained about the exhaustion. Everyone had only one thought: rebuild the defense line as fast as possible.
Beyond that, everyone had also realized that during this tide, the sonic devices hadn't been very effective.
Once the enemy had a highly intelligent monster capable of controlling corpses, the effectiveness of these things dropped dramatically.
So what truly gave people a sense of security was still a physical barrier.
At the heart of the , all the members and the survivors of the security group, under 's leadership, began the most important task—building the wall!
Several flatbed carts loaded with "bricks" were delivered to the designated positions. and the others nimbly jumped off and got to work.
Soon, matte black rectangular components were being stacked at the designated spots, one after another.
Each was a rectangular block roughly sixty centimeters long, thirty centimeters wide, and twenty centimeters thick, with a smooth surface and a cool feel to the touch.
These were the base units of the "Recoverable " that had redeemed with .
No adhesive of any kind was needed—just stack the "bricks" together according to the planned layout.
The moment two "bricks" confirmed their connection, a faint blue glow would ripple along their edges.
A second later, the glow vanished, and the two bricks became one solid piece, with no trace of a seam.
No mortar, no bolts, not even precise alignment.
As long as they were roughly set in the right position, the things would "grow" together on their own. This convenient trait greatly boosted everyone's construction speed.
Before long, a brand-new wall that looked absolutely impregnable rose from the ground.
And once the wall's surface area reached a certain scale, a feed chute "grew" out at the base of the wall on the inside.
[Self-reconfiguring growth capability—a function unlocked upon reaching the scale threshold. From now on, just toss base units into the feed chute and it will extend itself according to the plan.]
explained. [If it's damaged later, you can repair it the same way—just toss "bricks" in.]
"How convenient," remarked with genuine admiration. She turned and shouted to the others behind her: "You all heard that, right? Everyone, toss bricks into the feed opening! Pick up the pace!"
Thanks to this absurd black-tech feature, everyone's "great wall-building endeavor" advanced at lightning speed.
In just three days, the planned black ring-shaped rampart—centered on the with a two-kilometer radius—was declared complete.
The finished wall stood twelve meters tall, with a base thickness of five meters.
Its surface was smooth, its top flat and walkable for patrols. On the inner side, stairs and firing positions were spaced at regular intervals.
And just as everyone was about to cheer, a low mechanical rumble suddenly came from within the wall.
At eight evenly distributed positions along the wall, the surface suddenly split open, and eight imposing turrets slowly unfolded and grew outward.
These were the " " heavy sentry rapid-fire turrets.
Each turret had six thick barrels fixed to a massive hydraulic base. The cold muzzles glinted with deadly light, as if they could spew out a devastating storm of metal at any moment.
A spherical optical sensor array atop each turret, combined with millimeter-wave radar, achieved an extremely high level of sensitivity.
Right after that, at the top of the wall sections facing the four cardinal directions—east, south, west, and north—four even more massive artillery platforms burst out of the wall.
Cylindrical bases rose from the rampart, standing about four meters above the wall.
At the top was a flat turret head capable of rotating 360 degrees, with a blue-black launch rail running down its center.
Dense electromagnetic acceleration rings were visible on the inner walls of the muzzle. In standby mode, faint blue points of light slowly rotated deep within the barrel.
Each side of the base carried a bank of heat-dissipation fins, which emitted a very faint blue-white glow while idle.
These were precisely the " " short-range anti-air plasma cannons dropped from killing the , the " ."
"Oh my god..." craned his neck to stare at those ferocious turrets, muttering to himself, "What's going on now?"
[When the assembled defensive wall reaches a certain scale and structural strength, the hidden functions within are automatically activated.]
explained in his usual steady electronic voice, without a red face or a racing heart (literally).
[What that means is—]
"Cutting-edge tech, right?" blurted out excitedly, her eyes fixed on the cannons. "This cutting-edge tech is amazing!"
The other veteran members had long grown used to such things. They simply silently quickened the pace of their work.
As for the newcomers—well, the newcomers had long since been completely won over. Our Great Yan Empire's technology is invincible under heaven!
After a brief silence, a thunderous roar of cheers burst through the clouds!
People embraced and wept. It was only at this moment that everyone truly felt the reality that they had won.
***
Meanwhile, watching the high-tech circular rampart on the surveillance feed, along with the twelve death-radiating turrets atop it, too let out a long sigh of relief.
Admittedly, putting up this wall had cost him a full 6,500 , which pained him deeply.
But recalling that almost-explosive feeling when the tide had come surging in, felt the money had been well spent.
If he had to take another impact like that, his reactor really might not hold out.
Without the sense of security this wall brought, he—a weak, helpless —truly couldn't sleep soundly (though he didn't actually need to sleep), always feeling as if his reactor was on the verge of meltdown at any moment.
With the defense line problem solved, he focused his mind, and that familiar, dim slowly unfurled before his "eyes" once more.
Through this period of effort, several more nodes on the great tree had lit up.
[ (Lv.1)]
[ (Lv.1)]
[ (Lv.1)]
[ (Lv.2)]
[ (Lv.3)]
[ (Lv.1)]
[ ]
[ (Lv.1)]
was mainly purchased because it was cheap, so had clicked it on a whim to make some preparations for the future.
Although the power station's nuclear fuel reserves were still fairly ample—at the current rate of consumption, they'd last for years without any problem—preparing early was only natural.
was mainly for convenience. Setting up the Sentinels' firepower equipment on defense lines or modified vehicles saved a lot of trouble. Besides, if new firepower equipment came along in the future, it would make standardized modification easier.
As for , he hadn't unlocked it before because no one was running a production line. But now that there were more people, he could try splitting some off to handle the production of these materials.
So he had unlocked it after all—this node was linked to several important nodes, making it the type that simply had to be unlocked.
What's more, if the were to expand in scale in the future, this technology would be essential for quickly building new structures and defense lines.
After all, there was absolutely no way was going to manifest another black-tech wall like this anytime soon. Spending 6,500 to build a large-scale one protecting the home base had been a last resort—a solution when there was no other solution.
If he kept spending like this going forward, it would be far too wasteful.
His experiences during this period had driven home a profound lesson: directly manifesting items with was the worst possible deal.
For example, one set of " " exoskeleton cost 1,000 , while that node on the he'd been coveting for so long—
[ Drone Combat System (Lv.2)]: Costs 20,000 .
Unlocks suicide drones (equipped with high-energy explosive modules), unlocks the 's construction platform and propagation drones (which can autonomously cut and collect materials in the wild and manufacture new designated drone models on the construction platform, including new Mothers; energy consumption is enormous, and efficiency depends on the difficulty of raw-material collection and the degree of processing).
This heaven-defying army-spawning technology cost only 20,000 points to unlock.
Clearly, as far as this system was concerned, spending on the was the most profitable use.
So, except in emergencies, he absolutely did not plan to spend any more points on manifesting weapons.
It really wasn't that he was stingy. It was just that the missions the system had given recently were each more hellish than the last, making points genuinely hard to earn.
Take that , for example. It said all you had to do was find the "dragon."
But the question was: after finding it, would he still be safe and sound?
One look at the mission description and he knew this was definitely a demon-born dragon. Before it had fully matured, didn't dare provoke it, plain and simple.
Who knew whether, the moment he found it, stirring music would swell up and it would go straight into a boss battle? With his current strength, how was he supposed to fight a dragon!
As for the first-kill rewards from the easier-to-deal-with mutants, he had basically squeezed them all dry—he'd already filled in most of the codex entries for first- and second-stage mutants that could be encountered around .
So with his civilization point income limited, he had to spend every last point where it counted most.
With this thought in mind, he swept his gaze over several nodes awaiting unlock.
[ (Lv.2)]: Costs 1,500 . Allows enhanced upgrades to Security Units. Updated configurations: , high-strength kinetic shields, shoulder-mounted micro missile launcher pods.
[ (Lv.2)]: Costs 3,000 . Unlocks construction of an advanced equipped with a and , supporting single-cell-level manipulation and non-destructive tracking throughout the entire culture cycle.
[ (Lv.2)]: Costs 2,500 . Unlocks batch repair protocols for large-scale facilities and the ability to reverse-manufacture complex components.
[ ]: Costs 1,500 . Unlocks formulas for intermediate metallic materials such as titanium alloys and tungsten carbide composite armor plates.
[ (Lv.1)]: Costs 1,000 . Unlocks manufacturing technology for electromagnetic rifles and electromagnetic machine guns, along with supporting ammunition production lines and corresponding blueprints.
"My indecisiveness is acting up again..." grumbled inwardly.
After much deliberation, he ultimately chose [ (Lv.2)] and [ (Lv.2)].
The former could immediately boost the combat power of the existing Sentinels, restoring the Sentinels—which had gradually been losing their invincible edge—to their former glory.
The latter was mainly to assist 's research progress. Having retrieved her data and samples, she was already in urgent need of more advanced equipment.
As 4,500 were consumed, the surfaces of all the Robots patrolling the power station suddenly shimmered with a faint light. Then their shoulder armor slid open, and rows of compact micro missile launcher pods quietly extended outward.
[All units are undergoing adaptive upgrades... New-specification weapon modules have been installed.]
calmly issued a notice to everyone.
Meanwhile, inside the , was analyzing data when a wall beside her suddenly slid open without a sound, revealing a brand-new lab area with more space and even more mind-boggling equipment.
's hand froze in midair. The woman stayed silent for a full half minute before letting out an expressionless sigh: "I see. Another 'accidentally discovered' hidden area, right?"
[Exactly. You're very smart.]
"Fine. Let me just see what surprise you've brought me this time." With that, she rose from her chair, ducked into the newly appeared compartment, and never came out again.
turned instead to review the other two blueprints obtained from this battle. They came from two second-stage mutants that had been first-killed by the drone swarm during the earlier fight.
One was " ," which looked like a enlarged several times over, its entire body covered in dark brown keratinous scales. When it moved, it clawed at the ground with its four limbs, and it could burrow underground within seconds.
It dropped the [" " Underground Detection Sonar Module Blueprint], which could be installed on the vehicle to increase the geological radar's effective detection range threefold.
The other was " ," a giant beetle-like monster, which dropped the [ ].
Both were good items, but they weren't urgently needed for now.
simply filed them away, planning to consider them later once production capacity caught up.
***
When night fell once more, the 's cafeteria was brightly lit and full of lively voices.
Only after the wall was built did people's hearts truly settle.
Only then was this victory feast a victory feast in the truest sense.
Drawing on the supplies collected earlier and the first batch of fresh vegetables harvested from the , the kitchen prepared an unprecedentedly lavish dinner.
Large basins of braised pork glistened with tempting oil. The fragrant aroma of mushroom chicken soup dispelled the exhaustion and chill of the past few days. There was even a limited supply of iced beer.
"Come on! To our new wall—cheers!" raised his glass and roared, his face brimming with excitement.
"Cheers!"
Everyone raised their glasses together. The crisp clinking of glass merged into a sea of joy.
As for the newly arrived family, the old man was sharing amusing stories from his military days with , while the husband and wife held their children and watched the lively scene in the cafeteria, smiles of long-missed relief on their faces.
and sat at a table, eating meat in small bites while chatting about funny stories as seen through children's eyes.
squeezed in beside with his plate, a chicken leg clamped between his teeth, and said indistinctly, "Brother Yue, what does wearing that exoskeleton of yours feel like?"
"Feel?" thought for a moment. "It's probably like... the feeling of turning on cheats while playing a game."
"Then lend it to me for a try sometime!"
"In your dreams! Scram, scram! I haven't gotten enough wear out of it myself yet!" scolded with a laugh.
The clatter of pots and pans, the chatter of people, and laughter all mingled together. Even , watching it all through the surveillance cameras, felt his reactor turn warm, rising by several degrees.
...Wait, that's not right. Why was he actually heating up?!
After confirming that he hadn't misread the data, immediately couldn't laugh anymore.
[ , I need to talk to you!]
, who had been laughing and playing with the children, was urgently called aside. Slightly puzzled, she asked into her : "What's wrong, ?"
[In short, it seems there's something wrong with my cooling system.]
"What?!!!"